[…] In pre-modern times, and even up to the end of the 20th century, identity was connected to classes or grown social contexts. This identity could also combine contradictory elements and it was extended and colored by the individuals within the context.
Late capitalism with it’s market principles fragmented and flattened this. Social contexts became more or less liquid peer groups and identity is reduced to its basic idea: difference. But this difference doesn’t imply complexity or contradiction anymore. It becomes as clean, simple, and logic as brand identities should be. And identity and individuality become somehow synonyms.
Maybe this simplicity and shallowness, which doesn’t connect to human needs, makes people long for something deeper and more complex again.
But after all…“cultural identity" is an invention by capitalism that adheres to the concept of the nation-state.  Kiyonori Muroga